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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25289029">translucent cotton</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentography/pseuds/tentography'>tentography</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>spring, summer (and everything in between) [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>NCT (Band), WAYV</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - High School, Fluff and Angst, Kissing in the Rain, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, dont be a dick to your classmates, no longer a one-shot HHHH</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 05:42:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,882</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25289029</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentography/pseuds/tentography</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Johnny doesn’t lower his umbrella when he’s sheltered beneath the entrance of the school building with Kun. Instead, he bows his head down to Kun’s, tipping the umbrella lower to shield them from any straggling students, from prying eyes, from the world. “Are you ready to go?”</p>
<p>“We’re still on school grounds.” Kun pushes Johnny back at the collar, the angle awkward due to their closeness. His ice-cold fingers curl briefly around Johnny’s heated neck, the skin slick with rainwater and perspiration. Johnny’s pulse stutters beneath his fingertips and Kun smiles, letting go.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Suh Youngho | Johnny/Qian Kun</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>spring, summer (and everything in between) [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860382</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>88</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>translucent cotton</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It always happens when it rains, Kun has come to expect it.</p>
<p>“You don’t have an umbrella?” Johnny asks, voice carrying over the loud shattering of the rain, but its more of a statement rather than an inquiry. The bottom hems of his too-short grey uniform pants are already soaked from waiting outside, his shoes squelching wetly against the muddy grounds as he saunters closer to the entrance of the school building.</p>
<p>Kun doesn’t regret stalling in the classroom when the rain was barely more than a drizzle, taking his time to pack his bag. He doesn’t regret relishing in his solitude in the empty corridors, the other students long gone, having rushed home to beat the rain before it started to pour down in buckets as it is right now. He doesn’t regret pausing at the window in the staircase, watching Johnny’s lone figure in the courtyard battle the relentless summer shower with his one-person umbrella. He doesn’t regret making Johnny wait, nor does he regret <em>this.</em></p>
<p>Johnny doesn’t lower his umbrella when he’s sheltered beneath the entrance of the school building with Kun. Instead, he bows his head down to Kun’s, tipping the umbrella lower to shield them from any straggling students, from prying eyes, from the world. “Are you ready to go?”</p>
<p>“We’re still on school grounds.” Kun pushes Johnny back at the collar, the angle awkward due to their closeness. His ice-cold fingers curl briefly around Johnny’s heated neck, skin slick with rainwater and perspiration. Johnny’s pulse stutters beneath his fingertips and Kun smiles, letting go.</p>
<p>The stakes are high. Neither of them is particularly popular, they wouldn’t survive the backlash on account of their fellow pupils' lack of goodwill. They are the outsiders, the oversees transfer students enrolled mid-semester, weak in their Korean but even weaker in their social skills. They never stood a chance.</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>It had been autumn, another rainy day somewhere in the near-past not too long ago. The wind bit at Kun’s cheeks, as if taunting him for forgetting his umbrella, mocking him for being here in the first place.</p>
<p>“Fuck,” he cursed out loud in Mandarin, uncaring of the students shooting him funny looks. “Fuck. <em>Fuck.</em>”</p>
<p>He forgot to check the weather before he left. He hadn't planned on going to school in the first place, but anxiety licked at his heels, rushed him out of the door.</p>
<p>“Want to share?” Johnny asked, his umbrella laying closed in his outstretched palm.</p>
<p>Kun had seen him around, heard the whispers about him in the corridors. Johnny Suh, a grade above him. Poor and stupid, barely passing his classes, if he were to believe the pointless rumours.</p>
<p>Kun gave him little more than a sidelong glance, shrugging him off, shrugging everyone off. “Forget it,” he said when he actually wanted to say, “thank you” and “you’re the first person to talk to me in two weeks.” Instead, he ran.</p>
<p>His white sneakers slapped loudly on the wet asphalt. Perfect white mingling with muddy brown and grey, his throat burning at the jarring sight.</p>
<p>A second pair of sneakers squeaked next to him, dirty and beat up beyond the means of the current rainfall, a laugh not altogether unfamiliar ringing close. Johnny had followed, running after. </p>
<p>“That was way better than sharing an umbrella,” Johnny panted when they finally skidded to a stop.</p>
<p>Kun smiled, warily at first, and Johnny smiled back, hopeful.</p>
<p>The next day, Kun came down with a fever. Bedridden for the rest of the week, he eyed the raindrops tapping against his window with contempt.  </p>
<p>Two weeks later came the next rainfall. He found Johnny lingering near the school entrance.</p>
<p>“I fell ill,” he said, feeling the need to explain his absence despite the rain.</p>
<p>Johnny shook his head, unfurling his umbrella. “Come on, let’s go.” He pulled Kun closer and they walked this time. Their destination unknown, in search of nowhere in particular.</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>They are in different classes, different grades, in opposing wings of the building. Their break times don’t align, and they don’t know enough about one another to figure out if their schedule could be worked with, don’t know if that would be taking things too far. But they don’t care enough to bother<strong>.  </strong>It rains when they have time.</p>
<p>Nursing a coffee in a small café tucked away in a corner of the neighbourhood behind their school, Johnny comes to learn that Kun is smart, incredibly so.</p>
<p>He watches in wonder as Kun pours over his homework, working through his assignments and problems and questions in no time, while leisurely sipping at his piping hot chocolate milk. Then, he sighs as he pulls out a second stack of notebooks and Johnny realizes that he does his homework twice. Once in his native tongue, the second as he translates it all to Korean.</p>
<p>Kun takes longer, much longer, with his second set of notebooks, his leg bouncing anxiously beneath their table, bumping into Johnny’s outstretched legs ever so often, his chocolate milk set aside, cold and forgotten.  </p>
<p>Johnny reaches over and grabs a notebook he’s not working on, ignoring Kun’s protests. He looks through the neatly written hangul, unsurprised at the steady progression from okay-ish sentences to the near-perfect writing as he scans page after page.</p>
<p>“It’s good,” he tells Kun and the other mumbles a thanks, still anxious.</p>
<p>It is written all over Kun’s face, in the harsh set of his jaw, materialized in his notebooks, hidden between perfect strokes of hanzi and hangul. Good is not enough. Good will never be enough. Kun’s leg bumps against Johnny’s once again.</p>
<p>“Can I?” Johnny asks, holding up his pencil, little more than a stub at this point of the school year.</p>
<p>Kun tilts his head, confused. "What?"</p>
<p>“Help you?” He taps his finger on Kun’s notebook, laying open over his own homework assignments he is not planning on doing anytime soon. “There are a few things you can rephrase and some vocab things you can easily fix.”</p>
<p>Kun blinks at him, eyes round. “Would you?”</p>
<p>“Yeah.” He shrugs.</p>
<p>The bounce of Kun’s leg falters, coming to rest against Johnny’s.</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>It rains, and rains, and rains. Autumn has never been this wet. Elsewhere, people face the weather with distaste. In the sanctuary of the café, it’s a necessity.</p>
<p>Looking over Johnny’s half-assed math homework, scribbling explanations and answers in the margins, Kun bobs his head along Johnny’s voice, his guitar, his arrangement, his <em>music</em> filtering through the earphones they are sharing. Johnny’s cheeks are rosy with nerves, his heart darkened by his parents’ disapproval. Kun knows that Johnny has enough talent to shake the entire music industry<strong>. </strong></p>
<p>“Play it again,” he says, nudging Johnny’s shoulder with his own, the scratch of his mechanical pencil loud in the sudden silence.</p>
<p>Johnny reaches over to his second-hand MacBook, and Kun remembers that Johnny works two part-time jobs to afford his equipment. Knows that he doesn’t have the time to revise as much as he’d like because he’s been wanting to buy a keyboard and is taking extra shifts to cover the expenses. He goes back a few pages, expanding on an explanation he left in Johnny’s notebook.    </p>
<p>“You could be a professional,” he says, correcting another one of Johnny’s notation errors. He should be a professional. He will be in the future, Kun is sure of that much.</p>
<p>Johnny ducks his head, playing with the loose threads on his well-worn uniform shirt. “I don’t know if I can.”</p>
<p>“I do.” Kun bumps his knee against Johnny’s, the movement earning him a half-hidden smile. He wants to see it, wants to see more of it. “I know that you can.”</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>Two things become clear as the months fly by, autumn bleeding into winter.</p>
<p>Nobody cares about them, and thus, no one sees them beyond the rumours being whispered about.</p>
<p>No one bats an eye when Johnny all but manhandles him across the courtyard and into a hideout next to the emergency exit of the old gymnasium.</p>
<p>Kun’s shirt is wet, his hair is wet, his socks are wet – even his undershirt is soaked through by the pouring rain. He can barely see through the droplets of water clinging miserably to his eyelashes, and he wonders why he doesn’t mind it at all, only just registering the distance closing between Johnny’s mouth and his own.</p>
<p>They are in way too deep, he thinks, tilting his head so his nose doesn’t bump into Johnny’s. He feels the other grin into their kiss, tongue skirting out to brush against his bottom lip and he forgets why he should care if he is way in over his head.</p>
<p>They always stop come sunshine anyway.</p>
<p>Kun wants to storm into Johnny’s classroom in the middle of his class and grab him by the hand every time the weather forecast rings true. But he doesn’t. They don’t even speak to each other in the corridors.</p>
<p>It is better this way, safer for both of them. Johnny doesn’t need to be associated with the uppity Chinese student, thinking himself above the others he won’t even look in your direction. Kun doesn’t need to be associated with a student ranked so low, his parents can save money by not sending him to cram school.</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>A spring storm is brewing, expecting to flood the streets, students are let out early to get home before the drizzle worsens. They meet behind the school.</p>
<p>“I like you,” Johnny whispers, voice wobbling over the deficient words, his umbrella laying forgotten at their feet.</p>
<p>But Kun snorts, seeing right through him. “No, you don’t.”</p>
<p>Johnny laughs, the boyish sound mingling with the drum of the rain battering harder now, and Kun laughs right with him, tipping his head to the stormy sky, wishing it would never end, a little longer, a little more.</p>
<p>Something else is in the air, swelling in sheer volume every time they meet like this, buzzing in Kun’s ears. He’s sure that Johnny can hear it too, filling the empty spaces between each raindrop, barely audible over heavy breaths and the rapid beating of their hearts. It drips from the sky, only for those worthy enough to pick up on the right wavelength, but Kun isn’t entirely sure how to label the transmittance.</p>
<p>He catches Johnny’s wet lips in his own, tugging at the wet floppy strands of perfect dark brown plastered against his forehead.</p>
<p>Devotion.</p>
<p>Johnny pushes him against the wet concrete of the school’s East-wing, fisting the wet cotton of Kun’s uniform shirt.</p>
<p>Adoration.</p>
<p>Lightning flashes in the distance and they break their kiss with a startle, eyes wide. The thunderclap comes after and the ground rumbles with a one point three second delay. The steady rain regains new vigour within moments, pouring down as if to wipe the streets clean.</p>
<p>Resting his cheek against Johnny’s, Kun catches his breath, every inhale filled with the scent of the earth and wet dirt, spring rain and Johnny Suh. “Can you hear it?”</p>
<p>Johnny turns his face into the flushed skin of Kun’s neck, hiding the swell of his heart visible in the tremble of his lashes. “I hear it.”</p>
<p>Between each drop, a whisper of love, promising more with every rainfall. They know it’ll keep on raining, every season, without fail.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Not beta'd. Loosely inspired by the incessant rain where I'm at, and heavily inspired by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ydvPqrNEg4">this song</a>.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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